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Alternate Activity 1: Show and Tell

Activity time: 15 minutes

Materials for Activity

Personal transitional objects brought from home by children

Optional: A transitional object of your own

Preparation for Activity

One or two weeks ahead of this session, invite children to bring a transitional object of their own to share today. You can customize Leader Resource 1, Advance Letter to Parents. You may wish to send parents a reminder email several days before this session.

Optional: Bring a transitional object of your own.

Description of Activity

Children will have an opportunity to show and tell about an object that they love -an item that symbolizes home to them. Children may have brought a favorite blanket or stuffed animal. Perhaps a child takes this item along when he/she sleeps away from home. If he/she were to move into a new home, this would be the most important item the child would want to have in his/her new bedroom.

Gather children in a circle. Invite them, one at a time, to show the group the items they have brought. Ask each child to tell the group about the item. You may prompt with questions:

When did you get the item? from whom?

Where at home do you keep the item?

What do you like about the item?

How do you feel when you have the item?

You may share your own transitional object with the group, or tell them about a transitional object you had as a child. If you feel comfortable doing so, talk about how, when, and why the item was important to you.

Sharing their personal transitional objects may make some children feel quite vulnerable. Be sure to model respect for every item a child has brought. You may wish to say, in your own words:

Another child's transitional object might not look like much to you. But, to the person who owns it, it is very, very special.